Tempter, Tempted
by quantumspork
Summary: Turpin character study. Written several years ago; mostly unedited since. Critique appreciated.


"_O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,  
>With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous<br>Is that temptation that doth goad us on  
>To sin in loving virtue."<br>— Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure

• • •

**I. Four**

He makes what time he can for her, in the evenings. Often he finds her waiting by the door with a hug and kiss prepared, an unbridled expression of affection he still permits. He finds a strange sort of comfort in her fumbling innocent touch, a comfort entirely separate from the seduction of a grown woman's body. There is an honesty to her embrace that he cannot resist, and he in turn is unmasked before her, every guilt and flaw and sin laid bare. Yet it doesn't matter. She forgives him. She loves him. She sanctifies him. In her arms he is unbroken.

Still, alone in his bed at night, he allows himself to imagine her in ten, twelve years. Her champagne-colored hair curling down her back, her frame curvaceous and willowy, her hands slender and pale as Egyptian linen. She is her mother, but blurred and shaped and perfected as memories are wont to do with time. And this time, she is his entirely—no one to steal her from. No need to drive her to a glass of gin laced with arsenic this time.

Sometimes, if these thoughts wander too far, he takes the whip to himself, each strike bleeding desire. But even the pain of the lashes brings a perverse pleasure that he has come to crave. He has made the penance as delicious as the sin.

Someday, perhaps, he will no longer need penance; he will only need her.

**II. Eight**

She is no longer so willing to sit on his knee and babble of her fancies. She has outgrown her childish dreams of princes and towers, she tells him. She has already begun to talk of corsets and carriages. Not fairy tales, the real thing, she insists. He only smiles indulgently. However, it is rare that she speaks so freely at all anymore. She has become a quieter, more reserved, more proper girl, the kind every father wishes to mold his daughter into, and he is proud. Her behavior is flawless in most every respect. Sometimes, though, he glimpses what can only be the reason for this silence behind her wide hazel eyes. She is afraid. Most of the time he dismisses this as a healthy, traditional fear of God, but if he looks, he only ever sees it when her eyes fall on him. So he doesn't look.

He hopes he has been a good father to her. He has clothed her and fed her well, often coddled her in her girlish whims. Perhaps too often. Similarly, he has always been reluctant to punish her, for fear of breaking her like a porcelain statue.

He has struck her only once in all this time. She had announced joyfully that she had released her pet bird. It had seemed so sad in its cage, she told him, I just couldn't bear to keep it when it might be longing for something out there. He slapped her for her thoughtlessness. That bird had been an expensive gift, and besides, it would only die out in the city. It had no knowledge of how to survive on its own. She must learn to think of the consequences of her actions.

She'd cried and repented bitterly, and he had forgiven her, although he didn't let her know that for quite some time. He had to make sure she understood the weight of her transgression, impress it upon her in a way she'd never forget, however much it hurt the both of them.

She must never see how much power she has over him.

**III. Twelve**

Gray has crept into his hair like autumn fog these past few years, while hers has grown out ever more golden. She is no longer his little china doll, but a girl on the threshold of maidenhood. The way her breasts push at her dresses has not escaped his eyes, and her nurse told him last month that she has begun to bleed. His heart aches to see his little girl fading, but something else aches to see the woman she is becoming. The rose in full bloom is even more beautiful than its bud.

Even roses are a dangerous thought.

The older she grows, the more jealously he guards her, until he cannot tell if his feelings are that of a father or lover. He has never forgotten that he is of no blood relation to her. He cannot bear the thought of her married off and gone, leaving him with nothing but those volumes of drawings, faded and worn from too many leisurely, always-the-same perusals, images that will never approach or even allude to living beauty. Over the years, those pages have become far too closely tied to her in his mind. The shame, though, has worn away like the engraving on an ancient tombstone.

What he dreads is not her inevitable loss of innocence, but the thought that he may not be the one to take it.

**IV. Sixteen**

She's let her bird go again, but for different reasons this time. Or maybe the same, only she's fully conscious of them now. She's all too smugly aware of the symbolism of her act, a metaphor wrapped in a mummer's farce she's performing especially for him. There is a defiant stare in her eye, a hard line to her mouth he hates to see. I'd rather it live like God intended than see it waste away in a beautiful cage, she cries passionately. She's rehearsed this line for months, he can tell, carefully deciding which words and tone and emphasis will make it the clearest that she's not speaking of her bird.

Perhaps I shall take you out to look for it, he tells her softly. Perhaps we shall find it safe and happy in a pretty nest in Hyde Park...or, far more probably, we shall find nothing but feathers and shattered bones. Who knows what fate awaits it in the dark, wild world? A cat may catch it and take it home to her kittens, to devour as they will. Or it may fly into a thornbush and struggle until it is pricked to death. Or street urchins may throw stones at it until its brains are dashed all over the cobblestones.

Do you still find freedom more appealing than safety, my dear?

No, sir. I've learned my lesson, sir. I was terribly heedless, sir. Her hands are behind her back, fists probably clenched.

You are hardly an accomplished liar, he thinks, but lets it pass. There is a deeper worry at hand than her false penitence. She has lost her childlike content, the unthinking happiness he so cherished. She's begun to watch the world and want it. Want—the dangers in that word resonate too deeply for him to brush it aside.

Tell me that again when you believe it, he says coldly, and sweeps out of the room.

He finally understands why he needs her so terribly. He fears her.


End file.
